The abortion issue paralyzing our country is easily solved.

[NatMorton]

Well, one could say that when a woman’s eggs mature that “life” begins. Anti birth control people feel that way. That a condom is an offense against god.

If you want to complain about that you'll first need to find someone who believes in those things.

 

[NatMorton]

In fact when one counts both the Jewish religion and other pro choice religions .

We are the majority not the Catholics and the Religious right added together.

From the following:

The Pro-Choice Religious Community Could Be a Force to Be Reckoned With

Fighting the Christian Right is possible if the pro-choice religious community comes together to support reproductive rights.

msmagazine.com

The core of support in the organized religious community are mainline Protestant denominations, notably The Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, along with most of organized Judaism. There are also deeply considered pro-choice theological traditions within all of major world religious traditions present in the United States, including Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. Like Catholics, 55 percent of Muslims in the United States support access to abortion in all or most cases. Taken together, these religious traditions have vast resources, institutional capacity, historic and central roles in many towns and cities and cadres of well-educated leaders at every level.

These historic pro-choice religious institutions bring a tradition of democratic governance, and a broad respect for the values of religious pluralism, equality and separation of church and state—the constellation of values that comprise what we have called religious freedom.

There are also pro-choice religious groups focused on advocacy, education and access to services. These include the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Catholics for Choice, Just Texas and the National Council of Jewish Women.

So what?

 

[Gordy327]

What I said wasn't wrong. Viability has increased. It went from 26 - 28 weeks to approximately 24 weeks and I would venture to guess that will improve as well as science progtresses.

As I mentioned in a previous post, although I am pro-choice and I do not believe abortions should be granted beyond 20 weeks unless there is danger to the life of the mother of the baby

Why stop only at 20 weeks and not at viability? Viability has not significantly changed. Only the chances of survival at that stage has.

 

[Lursa]

If you want to complain about that you'll first need to find someone who believes in those things.

An individual human life begins at fertilization/implantation. Do you "believe" that it is significantly different? That is objective fact.

If you disagree, what's your 'objective' definition?

 

[weaver2]

Have you no compassion for the unborn?

If as a parent, struggling with poverty, you know that this pregnancy will wreck havoc with your family, why would compassion for the embryo be the very first priority? Have you no compassion for the already born?

 

[minnie616]

Have you no compassion for the unborn? …

Have you no compassion that 60 percent of women who have an abortion had "one or more" previous children—according to 2019 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
For them, abortion is the choice that makes the best, or only, sense.

weaver2 : posted:

If as a parent, struggling with poverty, you know that this pregnancy will wreck havoc with your family, why would compassion for the embryo be the very first priority? Have you no compassion for the already born?

 

[Lursa]

If as a parent, struggling with poverty, you know that this pregnancy will wreck havoc with your family, why would compassion for the embryo be the very first priority? Have you no compassion for the already born?

Well said. I got no answer to that question, maybe you'll fare better.

 

[weaver2]

You have much to learn about human embryology.

So do you!!!!!

By week six it's hardly a fully formed human, but it is a highly complex organism that is anything but an undifferentiated clump of cells. By the end of week 6, either fully or partially formed, are fingers, toes, arms legs, spinal cord, muscles, nerves, eyes, a beating heart, and a brain with measurable brainwave activity. Suggest you park your anti-Christian bias and do some reading on the subject.

By the end of 6 weeks you cannot tell the difference between a human embryo and a fish embryo. All the elements that will make a fish are present in the embryo of a human. The brain activity is at the level of an insect and there isn't any heart yet, just some circulatory tissue in the process of intertwining and bending into a what will eventually become a heart. There is no sound of a pumping heart. The sound at six weeks is the sinus node sending out the electrical pulses that will eventually control the heart beat. It can only be heard with a trans-vaginal sonogram.

 

[Scrabaholic]

Never said you did; it's a valid comparison, though. One advocating for a law to keep another from harm does not create a financial obligation on one to support that other person, whether it's you or whether it's the unborn.

The zef is not an "other". Prove that abortion harms it.

Voluntarily conceiving a child brings with it both responsibility and accountability.

Women who do not want to be pregnant do not "voluntarily conceive".

I have no idea where you're going with this.


Rape is an entirely different matter; that is not a voluntary act on the part of the woman.

So, the zef conceived in rape is not valuable, got it.

Old fashioned adoption also works.

Adoption is wrong except under unavoidable circumstances, IMO. Women should not pawn their children off on others to raise. It is a fact that adoptees tend to be less well adjusted and birth mothers have a risk of suffering emotionally the rest of their lives.

 

[weaver2]

The question remains how do we resolve our differences? My answer is via a democratic process. Others are here to say "I don't care how it's resolved so long as my view becomes the law."

Give one good reason why a right granted to all women should be voted on and denied state by state. Abolishing slavery was not decided by the democratic process, nor was the right to marry whomever you wanted to marry. Neither were the rights to own property, read what ever one chose to read, the right to speak out, the right to attend what ever church suited your fancy or none at all. Nobody is going to subject the right to men's privacy in in their "persons, houses, papers, and effects" to the democratic process. Why should women's rights have to be subjected to state referendums?

Give one good reason why simply having legal abortion isn't the most democrat way of addressing the issue. It leaves the decision up to each person to choose the best way for them to deal with an unplanned pregnancy. If you don't like killing fetuses don't get an abortion. If your wife/partner doesn't want to be pregnant but she is, instead of asking the state to force her to give birth sit down and discuss the matter like mature adults. Perhaps that is that too much to ask of the anti-abortion advocates.

 

[Individual]

OMG. A 24 week old "baby" is still a fetus until viable. I truly do not understand what you are trying to get across

Do you mean a 24 MONTH old baby?

Of course, a baby NOT a 24 week evolving fetus.
But what has viability to do with the issue?
The REAL issue, IMO, is at what point does government have any defined Right to exercise control of a life.

 

[Individual]

Jews are welcome to that opinion. Others differ.

Everyone should be welcome to their own opinions, and apply them as long as they do not impose them upon other individuals who exist in society.

 

[choiceone]

I have heard this argument before and it makes absolutely no sense. You seem to think a “compelling interest” is a sentiment detached from an actual interest in something. That makes absolutely no sense. One doesn’t just have an interest; one has in interest in something. When a state bans abortion, what do you think that compelling interest is in? Please be specific.

I don't understand your objection. The state's compelling interest after viability is in the potential life of the future child because it can become actual simply by the fetus's removal from the woman. In fact, in Casey, the state's interest before viability is still in the potential life of the future child. The state doesn't have an interest in the actual fetal life, which is part of the woman's life, because it can't get anything out of the pregnancy right now. It gets a person in the state after the childbirth.

You’re not arguing the point here. Whether a state creates and exception for the health of the mother does not speak to their compelling interest in a fetal right to life. When the woman’s life is threatened by the pregnancy her right life comes into play. Thus such cases are not denying a fetal right to life; it’s a recognition of a conflict of rights.

There is something wrong with turning pregnancy into a conflict of rights to life of the woman and embryo or fetus for a reason. The implanted embryo or pre-viable fetus cannot possibly live if unimplanted, whereas the woman can live without it. Hence, the implanted embryo or pre-viable fetus depends for its life on the woman's life. If it threatens her, it threatens itself. In a real conflict, they would have to be equal. After viability, if we see such a conflict, we are claiming that they are equals. If we knew she wouldn't die but would be seriously irreparably injured, would we save its life? I wouldn't. I don't think a fetus has a right to come into the world by seriously irreparably injuring the one on whose life it depended for at least 22-24 weeks.

Again, saying the mother has a right to self-defense does not preclude a state from expressing a compelling interest in the fetus’s right to life. You’re conflating two very different issues here.

Again, I don't think the state has a compelling interest in a fetus's right to life, but only in a future child's right to life. The state gets no benefit from a fetus; it only gets a benefit in the future from the child. This is not true as regards the woman: the state benefits from the life of the woman right now, not just in the future.

 

[choiceone]

Actually, you do agree, you just don't want to acknowledge it.

No, I don't. I am making a distinction, admittedly subtle, between an unlimited right to free speech and a right to unlimited free speech. For me, there is a difference. I don't think of the rights as being limited, but as the things one has a right to as being limited. That's because you and I can have rights to a thing, but when the rights conflict, the state can limit the amount/quality of the thing to which a right can apply.

Yes, the right to free speech is not unlimited. That is why when free speech is deemed to cause harm a state law can be used to impinge on one's right to free speech. You then say "ditto for privacy," but won't acknowledge what flows from there. Yes, privacy is also a limited right, and when exercising one's right to privacy is deemed to harm another than -- just like with libel -- a state law can impinge on that federal right to privacy and there is nothing unconstitutional about it. To put it in your terms, state law is "therefore defining what privacy isn't."

I certainly agree that rights may also be to limited privacy. But just as with free speech, if you limit the amount of privacy, it's because there is a conflict of rights. The state law is merely saying what it thinks can limit the privacy, but if a federal court doesn't agree on the limit, it can say the state law is unconstitutional. In this way, the federal courts decide 10th A issues of whether a power belongs to the state or the Constitution provides a federal power to say that power belongs to the individual people.

This is nuts. Defining when states can impinge on a woman's right to privacy and when they cannot is exactly what Roe did. It's its very purpose.

I agree, but I don't think the details were judicial activism. The SC was saying that an individual person has rights to privacy and liberty and that, if the state wants to impinge on them, its interest has to be compelling enough to compete. It attempted to say when that would be the case, in both Roe and Casey.

But the details indicated what interests wouldn't be sufficiently compelling for the SC to side with them - that wasn't judicial activism so much as clarification of what would inform possible SC decisions in the future, so the states wouldn't end up bringing an endless stream of challenges on the basis of particular details.

Also nuts. A state libel law absolutely inhibits certain types of free speech. If I lie about you and it causes you harm I can be fined and/or imprisoned. That is literally overriding my right to say what I want if what I want to say is a lie about you.

No, it isn't overriding your right. It is overriding your judgment as to what kinds of free speech you have a right to. It's a limitation, not on your right per se, but on the definition of what speech is free and what speech is not.

 

[choiceone]

You're absolutely right, there is no clear consensus, which is why Roe's standard was never valid. No supermajority in Congress and the states ever gave the court the authority to set the second trimester standard.

And no, it's not just a religious question. When one acquires the legal protection of basic human rights is, by definition, a legal question.

The Roe decision didn't give a standard as to when life begins. It said, simply, that since it was not in a position to give a standard as long as both religions and sciences differed (which they still do), it would simply agree that the Constitution conferred basic rights at birth and leave it at that.

Some have argued that the "judicial activism" of the Roe court is that they said the state had a compelling interest in the potential life of the future child at the third trimester, as this was a limit on the woman's rights as a person. However, the viability standard for a limit on abortion, which was stressed in Casey, made sense because birth could occur at that point. Even so, though, a woman's health exception was made because of the potential danger of pregnancy.

If the viable fetus had the legal protection of personhood, you couldn't make an exception for a woman's health. But frankly, that would persuade a lot of women not to get pregnant and give birth, on the grounds that the state didn't give a crap about their rights.

 

[choiceone]

Absolutely, especially since the 2nd -- and every single last enumerated right in the Constitution -- came into existence by a vote.

Rights aren't bestowed by God. In our system, you have the rights people voted to give you, and by the same process they can be taken away.

I disagree with this. The rights in the Constitution may have been acknowledged to exist by a vote, but they are ultimately not simply given by a vote - I'm at least that metaphysical. Once they have been acknowledged, people are not supposed to be able to vote them away, as that would make human and civil rights subject to mere majority rule. That's why the anti-abortion thing is so odious. In virtually all other cases, liberty rights have slowly been expanded in our national evolution, and the anti-abortion people want to contract them. Even with Prohibition consumption and home production of alcohol wasn't banned.

 

[choiceone]

I agree, when in power they spend far too much like Democrats.

Democrats decreased the deficit under Clinton AND Obama, and Biden has begun doing it. This didn't happen under Reagan, Bush, Sr., Bush, Jr., or Trump.

 

[HangLow]

​

 

[NatMorton]

If as a parent, struggling with poverty, you know that this pregnancy will wreck havoc with your family, why would compassion for the embryo be the very first priority? Have you no compassion for the already born?

Except that — again — you don’t know what my position on abortion is, so you'll need to park your personal attacks.

Those that believe life begins before birth aren’t showing a lack of compassion for the “already born.” In their minds they are trying to balance compassion for those born and unborn. Only your extremism is keeping you from seeing that.

 

[NatMorton]

Everyone should be welcome to their own opinions, and apply them as long as they do not impose them upon other individuals who exist in society.

If one believes human life, with rights, begins at some point during fetal development, then one clearly believes someone else's opinion is being imposed on that fetus.

 

[Individual]

If one believes human life, with rights, begins at some point during fetal development, then one clearly believes someone else's opinion is being imposed on that fetus.

As long as it's not their own fetus, what's the problem?

 

[NatMorton]

I don't understand your objection. The state's compelling interest after viability is in the potential life of the future child because it can become actual simply by the fetus's removal from the woman. In fact, in Casey, the state's interest before viability is still in the potential life of the future child. The state doesn't have an interest in the actual fetal life, which is part of the woman's life, because it can't get anything out of the pregnancy right now. It gets a person in the state after the childbirth.

In most (all?) of these bans the state's compelling interest is the right to life for the fetus. You're trying to detach the term "compelling interest" from an interest in that right to life, and it's nonsensical.

There is something wrong with turning pregnancy into a conflict of rights to life of the woman and embryo or fetus for a reason.

What's wrong is that it effectively blunts the demagogic accusations that abortion bans are only about "controlling women." This is the crux of the abortion debate: does the mother in exercising her Constitutional right to privacy violate an even more fundamental right of "someone" else? And that question all comes down how one defines a "someone." Everything else in this debate is noise.

The implanted embryo or pre-viable fetus cannot possibly live if unimplanted, whereas the woman can live without it. Hence, the implanted embryo or pre-viable fetus depends for its life on the woman's life. If it threatens her, it threatens itself. In a real conflict, they would have to be equal. After viability, if we see such a conflict, we are claiming that they are equals. If we knew she wouldn't die but would be seriously irreparably injured, would we save its life? I wouldn't. I don't think a fetus has a right to come into the world by seriously irreparably injuring the one on whose life it depended for at least 22-24 weeks.

Again, cases where the life of the mother (and thus often the fetus) are a different matter. The long running (and contentious) debate about abortion has been about cases where abortion is not medically necessary but rather only desired.

Again, I don't think the state has a compelling interest in a fetus's right to life, but only in a future child's right to life. The state gets no benefit from a fetus; it only gets a benefit in the future from the child. This is not true as regards the woman: the state benefits from the life of the woman right now, not just in the future.

What is the meaningful difference between a right to life and a right to future life? If either can supersede a woman's right to privacy, it seems to be no more than semantic hair splitting.

 

[NatMorton]

No, I don't. I am making a distinction, admittedly subtle, between an unlimited right to free speech and a right to unlimited free speech. For me, there is a difference. I don't think of the rights as being limited, but as the things one has a right to as being limited. That's because you and I can have rights to a thing, but when the rights conflict, the state can limit the amount/quality of the thing to which a right can apply.

I certainly agree that rights may also be to limited privacy. But just as with free speech, if you limit the amount of privacy, it's because there is a conflict of rights. The state law is merely saying what it thinks can limit the privacy, but if a federal court doesn't agree on the limit, it can say the state law is unconstitutional. In this way, the federal courts decide 10th A issues of whether a power belongs to the state or the Constitution provides a federal power to say that power belongs to the individual people.

In your previous post you said "There is something wrong with turning pregnancy into a conflict of rights to life" yet here you are describing how a right to privacy can be limited when there are conflicting rights. You may not believe a fetus has any rights, but others do. And for those that do, that's how they see this: a conflict of rights between mother and fetus.

I agree, but I don't think the details were judicial activism. The SC was saying that an individual person has rights to privacy and liberty and that, if the state wants to impinge on them, its interest has to be compelling enough to compete. It attempted to say when that would be the case, in both Roe and Casey.

Your last statement in this section contradicts the first and confirms that it was judicial activism. You acknowledge that the court "attempted' to define when a developing fetus can and cannot have a right to life. Where in the Constitution is SCOTUS granted the authority to make such a decision and have it be binding to all states?

No, it isn't overriding your right. It is overriding your judgment as to what kinds of free speech you have a right to. It's a limitation, not on your right per se, but on the definition of what speech is free and what speech is not.

Again, your splitting hairs. And you're also wrong. Were I to slander you I will not be fined or imprisoned for a thought crime (judgement is thought) I would be fined or imprisoned for the act of lying about you in a way that caused harm. That is punishing the act of me speaking, and a (reasonable) impingement on my right to free speech.

 

[NatMorton]

The Roe decision didn't give a standard as to when life begins.

That is simply wrong and a complete misreading of Roe. Stripped of its legalese, Roe added two components to federal law:

1. States may not declare fetal rights before viability.
2. States may declare fetal rights after viability.

That is a legal framework for defining when life begins, and there's no getting around that reality.

 

[NatMorton]

As long as it's not their own fetus, what's the problem?

Many would say the life of any fetus is worth protecting in the same way others would say your life worth protecting.